DOTA2

[Johny Cee]

If there is a potm pick, then sd usually gets picked/banned as it's free arrow hits all game.  Bane to a lesser extent, but SD is the big combo with potm.


Just from watching streams and playing, it seems like potm can basically fill in wherever which explains some of it.  She can be a support, a roamer, a hard carry, an off-lane or a mid.  It means you can be greedy with your other picks or adjust your strategy on the fly.  Even if she is a support with little farm, she has a good stun (for the skilled, not pubs) and a good aoe nuke combined with a game swinging ult, so she can contribute.

Alchemist was kind of in a similar situation last year, before his changes, as he was being run as both a trilane support/ganker and a hard carry.  Even a support alch tends to get pretty farmed if a game goes long, as greed really accelerates his gold gain with even the limited farm a support alch comes across.


The prize pool for the International is now past $3.5 million, with alot of people guessing it could top $5 million by the time the tournament starts.  That is mildly crazy.

[Fordel]

Mirana is basically a superior version of Windrunner. Which makes me a little sad because I like Windrunner a lot more, but the game shifts around a lot. Little over a year ago I could have easily said Windrunner is a superior version of Mirana.

[Falconeer]

4M 5M $ prize pool (and counting) for the next International? Am I dreaming?

[Fordel]

Gotta keep in mind it isn't just raw compendium sales, it's people buying compendium levels because they need their new hats that badly. 

[Falconeer]

But... what in hell this Compendium actually is? I have googled it and I can find overwhelming amounts of fluff except explanations about what it actually does. I learnt that it levels up, that it gives you some items and loading screens, that the more people have it the better, and also read a "should I buy the Compendium?" article, and I am still lost. Is it a "virtual ticket" to the International? Or am I just too clueless?

[Thrawn]

But... what in hell this Compendium actually is? I have googled it and I can find overwhelming amounts of fluff except explanations about what it actually does. I learnt that it levels up, that it gives you some items and loading screens, that the more people have it the better, and also read a "should I buy the Compendium?" article, and I am still lost. Is it a "virtual ticket" to the International? Or am I just too clueless?

Nope, it is just an overwhelming amount of virtual fluff.  That's it.

[Fordel]

It's like buying a silly foam finger at a baseball game.

[Hoax]

Basically valve is tanking the values of every item that can be RNG dropped while the compendium booster is active and they will also DESTROY the immortal item values I'm guessing. With a compendium you get oodles of free hats and a massive amount of increased hat drops from leveling up and opening your 5 level gifts and shit.

It would be like buying a silly foam finger at a ball game that let you have beer and food for the rest of the season at outside the stadium prices. Its not trivial.

In addition at the start of every game it shows off your e-peen (compendium) level to all 9 other players and the bigger yours is the more you are giving to them in terms of drop boosting. So yeah. Some people went a little crazy buying themselves compendium levels.

It would be fucking amazing if Valve was giving 60% of this free money to the dota players or something. Instead of a pretty measly 25% but they are still miles ahead of everyone. I think this in part was a response to the pressure of other organizations making pretty big lan events. Valve needed to reestablish The International as several cuts above everything else. True super bowl status. And this prize pool when its all over will definitely do that. God help us all if they add in more stretch goals and some of them sound awesome.

[Megrim]

Techies as a stretch goal.

[Thrawn]

Techies as a stretch goal.

I'd probably ask if I could have the money I've put in so far back.

[Megrim]

 

[Johny Cee]

4M 5M $ prize pool (and counting) for the next International? Am I dreaming?

It's passed $5.75M now, and keeps growing pretty steadily.  Will definitely be interesting to see what the new stretch goals will be, and how high the pot could potentially grow.

Interesting fact:  Whichever team wins, the players will vault ahead to the top of the leaderboard for most esports money won across all esports.  There has been some talk from gaming sites about it being time to rejigger the prize amounts to not be as front-loaded as they are now.  In previous years, the 7th-16th teams don't actually bring home any prize money.  Even giving them a 1% share would mean they would bring home the equivalent of a fairly major tourny win, and the winner would still bring home a couple of million dollars.


From the SEA qualifiers:

Fan favorite Zephyr (the Purge and Blitz team) got smoked, but everyone kind of expected that.  The big news is that MVP Pheonix, the other standout "Korean" (ie not many Korean players but play in the Korean leagues and live in Korea) team upset all expectations and look like they are guaranteed a ticket to the International.  Considering the enormous size of the prize pool this could actually jumpstart Korean Dota, which is seen as some of the weakest in the world despite Korea being a haven of professional gaming.

[Thrawn]

Somewhat off topic - the guys I play with are suddenly gung ho to jump on the season 1 fantasy league.  We will be drafting tonight (5/19) at about 7:30CST, I think we have 3 or 4 slots left if anyone wants to join.  Hit me up on Steam, I believe you need to have a compendium to participate?

*EDIT - FULL*

[Fordel]

You need a fantasy ticket (http://www.dota2.com/store/itemdetails/15794?r=258) , which the compendium provides. You can buy extra ones to join/start multiple leagues.

[Hoax]

DO NOT BUY ONE FROM VALVE. GET IT OFF THE COMMUNITY MARKET. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED. I WILL NEVER GET MY EIGHTY CENTS BACK.

 

In dota news, the most interesting qualifier (China) starts now. Its LGD, DT and HGT as the early favorites. But so far these qualifiers have all delivered pretty crazy upsets and performances so I'm definitely looking forward to this one.

[Megrim]

Most interesting, huh.

[Bann]

Id like to draft with ya

[K9]

I was bummed Zephyr didn't make it further because I am a big fan of Purge. I watch his videos and I don't even play DoTA. The guy has a natural talent for presenting material, and he seems to be an all-round decent guy too to boot.

I'm actually quite excited for TI. I need to read a breakdown of the teams to get a feel for who is competing this year. I'm not sure who I'll root for; perhaps Alliance, since they seem to pull off some fun stuff...

[Fordel]

Team Liquid will probably have write ups for all the qualifying teams if they don't already.

[K9]

I'd go look for them, only the team liquid forums are an unsightly mess.

[Fordel]

http://www.liquiddota.com/ It's all in their front page articles, they recently branched off all their Dota stuff to it's own hub.


In other news, compendium broke 6 million and reached all stretch goals. What now Valve! 

[schild]

The Compendium is so well-presented, I don't even play DOTA and want to throw money at it.

[Trippy]

Why the fuck do they make you buy the Compendium through the Web site? Their SteamGuard is all fucked up on the Web site and it took my 4 tries to even log in.

[Kail]

Why the fuck do they make you buy the Compendium through the Web site? Their SteamGuard is all fucked up on the Web site and it took my 4 tries to even log in.

You can buy it through the in-game store, too.  Just not from Steam directly, I guess.

[Johny Cee]

I was bummed Zephyr didn't make it further because I am a big fan of Purge. I watch his videos and I don't even play DoTA. The guy has a natural talent for presenting material, and he seems to be an all-round decent guy too to boot.

I'm actually quite excited for TI. I need to read a breakdown of the teams to get a feel for who is competing this year. I'm not sure who I'll root for; perhaps Alliance, since they seem to pull off some fun stuff...

Purge is like the bizarro-gamer.  He's mature, doesn't shit talk (and will say something to his team-mates if they start talking), mellow, will talk about why he is doing stuff, point out his own mistakes, doesn't speak in catchphrases, etc.  He has been pretty open about the fact that he doesn't really have pro-level skills, and he would have been really shocked if Zephyr made it to the International.

[Johny Cee]

Most interesting, huh.

It's probably been posted, but here is Korean casters going insane due to an exceptionally long and farmy Chinese game:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5G9O9j0DSII

[Fordel]

NEW Stretch goals! http://www.dota2.com/international/compendium/

[Kail]

$8,800,000 - Live broadcast of the after party, with special guest Darude

Kill me.

[Fordel]

DUDUDUDUDUDUDUDUDUDUDUDUDUDUDUDUDUDUDUDUDU

[Trippy]

WTF is that page now in Chinese?

[Fordel]

English to me.

[Trippy]

English for me requires this:

http://www.dota2.com/international/compendium/?l=english

Without the l=english it defaults to Chinese for me.

[schild]

The new stretch goals are lame as fuck.

[Hoax]

Naw there are def some good ones, vote on a model redesign (aka fix Shadow Fiend but keep the pimp walk). New alt voice is nice but probably will go to someone popular instead of someone who needs it.

Also while I'm shocked they didn't put a 30mil goal of choose which hero comes next (to troll techies some more) I think the 10mil goal is nice. I mean knowing what we do about voice work that's a shitton of money and effort worthy of the 10mil spot at least if I'm reading it right and we'll get a new recording for every single hero.

[schild]

Again, I don't play the game, so those new stretch goals are lame as fuck. The prior ones made the game sound sweet. The new ones make the game sound imperfect/incomplete/takeyourpick.